"We're going to murder people who need to be murdered." So begins a press release from a mysterious group known only as "The Five," shortly after a vicious predator is murdered in San Francisco. The Five is believed to be made up of vigilante killers who are very bored...and very rich. They target the worst of society--rapists, murderers, and thieves--and then use their unlimited resources to offset the damage done by those who they've killed, donating...

In the late nineteenth century, Newport, Rhode Island, was a cauldron of money, excess, and unapologetic greed, where reputations were made and lost in a whirlwind of parties and fancied slights. But amid the glamour of yacht races, tennis matches, and costume balls raged undeclared class warfare, scandalous doings, even madness. In 1893, railroad mogul Sam Driver, one of the few surviving robber barons of the lawless years after the Civil War, knocks...

Manhattan's most envied residents appear of have everything they desire: wealth, beauty, happiness. But sometimes the most practiced smiles hide the most scandalous secrets.

In the fall of 2007, Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Their situation only improves when Jende's wife Neni is hired as household help. But in the course of their work, Jende and Neni begin to witness infidelities, skirmishes, and family secrets. Then, with the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, a tragedy changes all four lives forever, and the...

Beautiful orphan Edith Adelton came to the United States as a child to be a companion and tutor to the Hamilton family's young daughter Amy. Though Edith's parentage is a mystery, she has found great happiness with the Hamiltons. When the family's cousin Ida comes to visit, Mrs. Hamilton enlists Edith in a matchmaking plan involving two suitors for Ida. But both men fall for the lovely Edith. As Ida sees her chances fade, she schemes to discredit...

In the early 1970s, Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of the powerful Metarey family. Soon, through the family's generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president of the United States. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the...